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Part 8: Alberto Drops In To Save The World.
Bridgewater Gerry wonders what to do with the video, Alberto lies low, while Zach decides to help out his neighbour.
Part 9
Deirdre Marks gestured to Zach to sit down. He didn’t really see where; the couch she was pointing at was scruff-deep in cats. Others looked on from the kitchen bench, the corner and the hallway. And the floor. And from various shelves of bookcase that had more animals than books.
“How many cats are there?” he asked her perched timidly on the edge of the couch. He slid slowly further back until a paw poked him and he got the message.
“To be honest wit ye I don’t know,” she answered as she turned one of the dining chairs around to face him.
“They come and go. Most of them are street cats. They just stay here when they want to. And that might be a while, or not. There’s only one who stays here all the time and that’s Nina, so it is. She was my mother’s cat until Mary passed, God rest her soul.”
“Uh, which one’s she?” asked Zach nervously.
Deirdre called her name and Nina stalked in. She looked around for a moment to sum up the situation, thumped Zach’s leg twice with the hardest head butt he’d ever had from a cat, and stalked out again.
She smiled. “That’s what she’s loike,” she said. “She’s me cat. She’s the only one I really want here.”
Zach considered this. There was more to the story, probably. Deirdre Marks was the one who’d invited him in, so he might as well let her tell it.
“Some things just koind of happen. I don’t even loike cats that much. Just one day, there I was, not long after me husband had died, there was this stray in a terrible condition huddled in the front yard. And you’ve seen the front yard…it’s not like there’s any shelter. It was just there, being miserable. So I thought, might as well come in an be miserable with me. And that was how it started. And a year or two went by, or I don’t know how many, it doesn’t seem to matter when you get on a bit, you just live by routine and the routine came to be that cats would turn up. And I’d feed them if they wanted feeding, or let them stay inside if they wanted. And if they didn’t they didn’t.”
Zach wondered if she ever got used the smell. Cats and cat hair and cat food and something musty like a wet cat that never dried out properly and still stank like wet cat.
“So, er, how can I help?” he asked after a while.
“I want to get rid of them. I’m going to sell the house and go back to Ireland. To see me-”
She interrupted herself with a furious bout of coughing. Zach shrank back.
“Can’t be that virus, I never go out. Still living on tinned food I bought months ago. Anyway. What was I saying? To see me son. Lost track of him. He never got on with his Da. Never wanted nothing to do with the laundry. Went to Ireland so see some relatives and never came back.”
“I think travel’s going to be impossible. Soon. Flights are being cancelled. Borders closed.”
Deirdre nodded. “The doctor said I moight have twelve months. That was…a while ago. I still feel about the same, but as you can see I’m not very well.”
“Have you tried online groups?” he asked. “I know there are cat rescue and adoption groups.”
“Don’t do online. That’s the problem with me son. We wrote letters and postcards for a few years. Then they stopped. I call his aunt every now and then, and she hasn’t heard from him in over two years.”
He could see she was in some kind of pain. Her body was at an angle and her face struggled to hold the strain.
“Perhaps I could take one cat a time?” offered Zach. “And look after it until, uh, I can sort something out?”
“That’d be lovely, dear, so it would,” she said.
Did Zach feel any guilt about having just obtained a dying woman’s permission to take her cats to feed the last thylacine, who finds them delicious? Just a twinge.
“Perhaps I could also, er, help with the back yard?” he offered. “Like cut the grass?”
“That’s nice of you but not necessary. Heavens, I can’t even see the yard any more my sight’s that far gone.”
“Really?” said Zach. Interesting.
“Wait, there is one thing. There’s the shed right at the back. If ye want ye could clear that out. I’ll do me best to clear out the house. Bit by bit. Maybe by the time all this virus thing has blown over, we can have it all done. I’ll get some people in to clean the house and tidy the garden. Then sell it for what it sells for, and then I can be off.”
“Sure thing,” Zach promised. “If it’s okay with you I’ll take a look, umm, now?”
Deirdre Marks nodded.
And just like that, Zach had found both somewhere for Alberto to stay and enough fur-chicken to feed him for quite a while. Let’s see, two to three cats a week, there must be about twenty in the house, so that’s a good couple of months right there. Add in occasional meals at his place – Zach was convinced Alberto was taking a liking to fried tempeh marinated in Sichuan sauce – and maybe even other neighbourhood strays and he was sorted for the foreseeable future.
Which in the time of novel coronavirus, was not very long at all.
* * * * *
Rosandra Gutfeld tapped the desk nervously. Richard Kanitji had practically demanded a face-to-face meeting. She’d told him it would not be a good look if word got out they were having a meeting in person when everyone else was making do with video chats.
“A meeting of two is still allowed, and we are not discussing your future by video!” he’d thundered.
What did the prick want? she wondered. Kanitji was insufferably ambitious, she knew that much, but even he didn’t think the middle of a pandemic was the time to bring on a spill? She could just imagine the headlines: OPPOSITION IGNORE VIRUS FIGHT, PUMMEL EACH OTHER.
Kanitji was the son of a Northern Territory man and Tasmanian woman, both Aboriginal. In fact his father had been a respected elder, one time possibly the most powerful indigenous man in the Territory. Namal Kanitji had been a key figure on the Land Council, had received an OAM for his community work, and had been respected by all sides of politics. There was even a state funeral after he’d been taken by a crocodile while visiting relatives at Minjilang.
After his death Richard Kanitji had felt he needed to get away. He’d studied in Melbourne and enjoyed it, though it was a hard world to survive in. After graduating he’d had a few jobs to choose from, including some that would have set him along a path following his father’s footsteps.
But he had his own inner spirit animal, he reflected.
The stingray links me to my father, but it hunts its own prey.
He’d eventually decided to take the job with an Aboriginal legal service in lutruwita / Tasmania, and that was where he’d met his wife.
He was hugely popular. He was a great dancer of his own people, and mob in Tasmania had much to learn. He was much sought after as a speaker and cultural celebrity, so it was only a matter before a political party came knocking. And he’d astounded them by, on the wave of a viral Yes We Kanitji! campaign, being elected first time around, leapfrogging from the bottom of the ticket to win a seat ahead of the second-ranked candidate.
Never mind that he’d only been in parliament six years, and all of it in Opposition. Now is my time, he was convinced. All he really had was a hunch, but he was sure it was worth a shot.
Kanitji knocked on the door of Rosandra Gutfeld’s office and waited. He was almost through the door before she said ‘Come in’.
“Take a seat,” she said.
He was a very tall man and knew that sometimes intimidated people. He took a few paces around the office to let his presence fill the room before sitting down to face her across the desk.
“Trade Commissioner. Advocate for the Status of Women. I’m sure we’ll be able to find a nice gig for you post-politics,” he began.
“We are full of ourself today, aren’t we?” she replied. “What makes you think I’m going? You know a spill right now would be a terrible look Richard, even if you had the numbers.”
He shrugged. “The numbers don’t matter. You’re going to retire.”
“I most certainly am not!” she snorted.
“I don’t feel inclined to watch it again, but those boobs in the Brookesy video are definitely yours.”
She bit her lip for a moment.
“That’s sexual harassment. Under our party rules, if-”
“That’s fact. See that ornament behind you? Looks like a carving of a native American woman? You can see that clearly in the video. Which means that video was shot here. Now who has access to the Leader of the Opposition’s office, is known to have been a bit fond of Byron Brookes, and has extremely pale skin?”
The blanched skin of Rosandra Gutfeld took on a scarlet hue.
“And whose career would be dealt a fatal blow if it were known that while all Tasmanians were being urged to stay home to save lives, she was heading into the hallowed ground of Parliament House just to go bangarang Brookesy on her publicly-funded oak desk?”
“My relationships are none of anyone’s business.”
“Oh, but your integrity is. And this was probably in the week she appeared in a live-broadcast video call and said, if I remember correctly, ‘I’m really enjoying this time at home with my children’.”
Gutfeld looked down at the desk, the scene of the flagrante delicto, as if it might have something to say.
“So your choices are to be roasted by the media who, frankly, might be thrilled to have a juicy scandal to make a change from coronavirus updates 24/7. Or to resign, ‘for personal reasons’ and sit quietly on the backbench.”
Pandemic silences were even more silency than normal ones, everyone was discovering.
She took a deep breath.
“Suppose I did. Resign. That doesn’t make you leader, Richard. The party-room-”
“-is going to approve me unanimously. Because you’re going to call every single member this weekend. As you say, a spill would not be a good look. So tell them what you believe: we need to unify behind a sole choice. And that’s me. First cab off the rank. You’ll be looked after when you leave politics, that’s my word. But you can’t stay, and now is my moment, and you’ll probably think I’m an arrogant prick, and that’s okay because deep down you know this is just how things work. And I am an arrogant prick when I’m right and I’m so right about this.”
The prick even knows prick is the exact word I have for him. Gutfeld wanted to strangle him, with every ounce of fight she had left. Unfortunately there was none.
“I’ll call a media conference for Monday, for an important announcement by the Leader of the Opposition,” she said blankly. “I will choose my words carefully. You should be there. I won’t invite the rest of the members to be there in person, they can dial in. They’ll all be on board. Some of them won’t like it, and that’s yours to deal with, but they will make public acknowledgement of,” she clenched her teeth, “your leadership.”
Richard Kanitji smiled and rose from his chair, taking the moment to tower over her and remind her who was the new boss. “I’d shake on it, but you know, distancing.”
He gave her an airy wave as he walked out. He was already thinking about which journalist to feed a rumour to about Rosandra Gutfeld, who having found she enjoyed the isolation much more than she had expected was seriously thinking about stepping down from politics for more family time and a quieter life. That flies.
* * * * *
It had taken a few times but Gerry finally got through to Byron Brookes. Just like his soon-to-be ex-, she mused.
“Look Gerry, not taking questions. The video’s out there kind of everywhere, there’s nothing to say.”
“I realise it must be a difficult time for you, Byron,” she said, selecting good journalist from her good journo / bad journo control panel. “All this coronavirus stuff is making people weird.”
“Yeah, but still not talking about. I am no longer a public figure.”
“I get that,” she said. “Mind you, when you invited the media to your house…”
“Not going there either.”
“The thylacine sighting? I want to believe.”
Gerry was hanging on the reply and even Mono leaned in a little closer.
“Didn’t happen. As you said, weird people and all that. I made it up. Wanted attention. Now I don’t. Simple as that. I need to change and that starts now. The past is gone. Not saying a word about it.”
“So you are categorically stating that you were not attacked by a thylacine?”
“Didn’t happen. End of. I have nothing to say about anything Gerry. Please don’t call me again. I’m done.”
* * * * *
Zach had propped a ladder near the fence, and lopped a few bits off an overhanging walnut tree. It looked just as if the ladder was standing there for a half-done pruning.
It was any ideal way to get up and over the fence. Alberto beat him to it and was into Deirdre Marks’ back yard in a flash. Then Zach was over, and beating a path through the heady weeds to the shed.
“As I said, we need to make a bit more space. But it’ll be comfy. A bit cold, but at least it’s your own place.”
Alberto surveyed the shed. It was narrow with a bench running almost the full length. Along the back wall were rusty spanners and other hand tools dangling from nails. A jumble of boxes occupied most of the floor. Three panes of seen-better-days glass faced toward the yard, though Alberto wasn’t tall enough to see out unless he climbed up on something. Zach positioned a crate for him and he had a go.
“She can’t see very well, and doesn’t come out in the yard. So you’re pretty much free to come and go. All I would ask is that you find somewhere to dispose of any bones you don’t eat.”
Alberto sniffed the air warily, doing a slow 360 from his perch.
“I find the premises acceptable. But hey, have you got any Pink Floyd posters?”
The secret’s out, and Alberto is on the run! Join Alberto and Zach’s coronavirus adventure in Part 10 of Alberto Drops In To Save The World next weekend.
